Lelouch In Hell
by funvince
Summary: Lelouch thought his troubles would be over after he died. He was wrong.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **We've all read those heartwarming fanfics where Lelouch ends up in Heaven after he dies. I decided to do a different take on how Lelouch's afterlife would turn out.

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><p><strong>LELOUCH IN HELL<strong>

**-Chapter 1-**

"I love you, big brother!"

Lelouch wanted to respond and tell his sister that he loved her too, but his lungs had already filled with blood making it impossible for him to speak.

He wanted to tell her to not waste her tears on him. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay now. He wanted to tell her so many things...

"Zero! Zero! Zero! Zero!"

He had to smile at the sound of the crowd inadvertently praising him even as they condemned him. For he was the Demon Emperor, the most fearsome tyrant in history, but he was also Zero, the symbol of hope for mankind. In the end, which was his true face? Was he a monster or a hero?

Maybe he was both.

_I am the destroyer... and creator... of worlds..._

The sight of Nunally's tear-streaked face was the last thing he saw before...

Darkness.

* * *

><p>For a moment, Lelouch did not know where he was until he took a breath and gagged as the smell of rotten eggs hit his nostrils.<p>

Hydrogen sulfide. The combination of hydrogen and... sulfur.

It did not take a person of his intellect to deduce where he was. He had half-expected this after all.

Lelouch opened his eyes. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting and then he saw that he was lying on the floor of a giant cavern. He looked around in bemusement at the stalagmites and the rocks littering the ground of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary limestone cave.

He was almost disappointed. Where were the pits of fire and the howls of the damned? If he remembered his Dante correctly, he should be in the Seventh Level of Hell writhing in the river of boiling blood along with the violent, the assassins, the tyrants, and the war-mongers. Or he should be in the Ninth Circle where the traitors dwelled. Well, there was no reason that the real Hell would match the writings of an Italian poet who was probably on psychedelics when he created his masterpiece.

The Greeks had believed that the underworld was literally under the earth so from that perspective it only made sense that hell would be made of stone and moss. That raised the question of whether he was actually still in the mortal realm or on a completely different plane of existence altogether.

Lelouch recognized that he was procrastinating with these pointless thoughts. He could lie here paralyzed with indecision waiting for the other shoe to drop, or he could move forward like he always had.

He sat up and noticed with some annoyance that instead of his white Emperor clothing he was just wearing a loincloth. He gave a deep sigh as he stood up and started walking. He didn't know where he was going, but he figured that the light he was seeing by had to come from somewhere. There had to be an entrance of some kind nearby.

That was assuming that logic had any place here.

He had no idea how much time had passed before he made it to the entrance of the cave. He tried to make out what was on the other side, but the light emanating from the opening was too bright. Was this supposed to be some representation of Plato's Cave? If so, then what would be on the other side would be the truth.

To his dismay, he found that his hands were shaking. He forced them to stop. Lelouch vi Britannia was not a man who backed down from the unknown.

He stepped into the light...

* * *

><p>He couldn't move his limbs.<p>

Lelouch rapidly blinked his eyes to adjust to the glare as he tried to figure out what was going on. One moment he was walking out of that cave and now he was...

Tied to a cross.

He looked down and saw that his body had been arranged in the classic crucifixion pose, and he was tied to a heavy wooden cross with thick ropes. There were no nails present, but Lelouch had a feeling that it was only a matter of time.

Judging by the position of the sun over his head, it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. He was surrounded by barren dessert. He could barely make out a city in the distance. For the moment, the only objects present were him and his cross.

Lelouch had to laugh. Apparently God or Satan had a sense of humor. This was a fitting punishment for someone like him who was so arrogant to believe that he could take the sins of the world unto himself. This warped reenactment of the Resurrection and the Passion was clearly a message. A sharp rebuke of his delusion that he could become a savior through evil deeds.

He had no way of determining if his plan, Zero Requiem, had succeeded in the end. Perhaps he had damned himself for nothing. No, he had been damned long before he decided to become the Demon Emperor.

Lelouch didn't know when his laughter turned into sobs. In another life, he would have been appalled at his weakness, but what did appearances matter now? He would never see Nunally again.

Time passed. Day followed by night then day again. Endless repetitions of blazing days and freezing nights.

His pale skin began to burn under the glaring sun and his body began to wither from a combination of thirst and hunger. The slightest movement caused his muscles to explode into fiery pain as the strain of having his body held up only by his arms for days on end took its toll.

Lelouch was reminded of the desperate weeks after the Britannian invasion during his childhood when he, his sister, and Suzaku had wandered the Japanese countryside looking for food, clean water, and shelter.

He had learned an important lesson during that time. Torment did not have to be grandiose. Hell was not just a place with fiery pits and vicious demons.

It was an empty stomach. A parched throat. Feelings of helplessness and impotent rage.

Their lives had been ruled by fear of sickness, fear of assault, fear of death. Even as his feet had blistered and his vision started to blur, he forced himself to keep moving forward. Because to stop was to die.

Lelouch had gained his greatest skill during those hellish weeks. It was the ability to move forward despite pain and a breaking heart. Even after Euphemia had died, after Shirley had died, after so many people had died, he had continued moving forward.

It wasn't until he thought Nunally was lost to him forever that he realized how weary he was and how much he wanted to stop. So he stopped.

And now he was dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**-Chapter 2-**

Even though he had no idea how many days had passed since his ill-advised decision to leave the cave, Lelouch suspected that his body would have expired by now if he was still alive. Was it even possible to die in Hell? It was clearly obvious that his body was not as corporeal as it used to be.

He knew that he was a spirit, but he wondered if he was the same type of spirit that Marianne the Flash had been in the World of C. He then wondered if his mother was also residing somewhere in Hell. And then he tried his best to stop thinking about that.

Unfortunately, there was nothing for him to do but think. But there was only so many times that a person could mentally play chess against himself before he realized that it would always end in a stalemate. He was currently working on a variant in which his opponent would only have the strategic capability of someone like Suzaku.

Part of him wished Suzaku was here. That may have been a selfish thought, but he could think of no other person he would want to walk at his side through Hell. But Suzaku was not here, and Lelouch was no physical superman who could snap his bonds with a twitch of his muscles. He was a leader, but there was no one here to lead or command.

So all he could do was dangle alone with his thoughts and wait for a change in circumstances. An opportunity would present itself. He had to believe that.

Lelouch wondered if it would be worth the attempt to try to bargain with Lucifer or to plead forgiveness from God. He wondered if trying to do one would preclude him from trying the other. Lelouch did not have any serious intentions of doing either, but he couldn't stop himself from trying to think through the possibilities.

He couldn't stop thinking. Mao once told Lelouch that he was not the type of person who could empty his mind, and that madman had been right. Thinking and thinking about what he was thinking and so on was Lelouch's power and his curse. That was why he had lost the most important chess game of his life that day.

If he had been designing the perfect hellish punishment for himself, he would have put himself back in that moment when his world had crumbled. Only this time there would have been no Suzaku to come crashing through the window to save the day.

Or perhaps he would have put himself in the moment when the Tokyo Settlement had disappeared off the face of the Earth and he had _known_that Nunally had been in the blast radius.

Now that he thought about it, this punishment that he was suffering from that he once thought was so fitting now seemed rather perfunctory. Sticking him out on a cross in the middle of nowhere to rot seemed so unimaginative now that the novelty had worn off. Was this really the best that Hell could do? Or was the real punishment the knowledge that he didn't warrant any special treatment and that he was to be treated no differently than the average mass-murdering megalomaniac? That would certainly be a blow to his ego.

Or maybe this situation had nothing to do with him and was really an indication of the limits of Hell's resources and abilities. Perhaps only so much attention could be allotted to each damned soul. Hell must be awfully crowded after all...

It was probably a sign of his deteriorating mind that it took him a few minutes to realize that the black shape moving in his direction was a person.

No, not a person.

The creature walking toward him had the head of a bull and the body of an Austrian bodybuilder on steroids. The crimson loincloth covered but did nothing to hide the fact that this creature was male. He looked like he belonged in one of those Zachary Snyder movies that Rivalz had insisted that Lelouch watch with him.

Lelouch wondered if all demons (for this creature could be nothing else) resembled the mythological Greek Minotaur. Perhaps the appearance of a half-man, half-monster was intended to be another subtly mocking message.

Lelouch felt his sluggish brain kicking into overdrive as he tried to predict how the forthcoming encounter would go, but he did not have enough information to do more than come to the obvious conclusion that it was probably not going to go well for him.

The demonic Minotaur stopped about ten feet away from where Lelouch was hanging. Up close, he was quite the imposing sight standing at least 8 feet tall with biceps the size of Lelouch's head. His horns extended out from his head to about five feet in length. In his gigantic left hand were three long, wooden nails and a hammer. In his right hand was a leather bullwhip. He also had a double headed battle axe strapped across his back.

Lelouch briefly wondered if he was hallucinating this bizarre and impossible sight, but the sight before him was too detailed, too real. Lelouch forced himself to lift his head and look directly into the monster's surprisingly human, pale blue eyes.

He was not surprised when the creature spoke. It was almost to be expected in this outlandish new world he now inhabited.

In a booming voice and with clear diction that would have made Sir Ian McKellan proud, the creature said, "Mortal tyrant, you have undoubtedly realized by now that you have entered Lord Lucifer's domain, the realms of Hell! In life, you traded your soul for power. Power that you used to enslave and to kill. You have subverted the will of thousands for your own selfish gain! For your crimes, you have been sentenced to an eternity of suffering! Do you deny the justice of this punishment?"

Lelouch could not help but smile at the sight of his captor practically chewing the scenery as it spoke. Being a man prone to theatrics himself, he had to appreciate the effort. He was compelled to respond in kind.

He licked his dry, cracked lips. Lelouch was surprised that he still had enough spit to speak. He said hoarsely but clearly, "I do not deny my crimes. I do not deny my sins. But I do protest my sentence. A wise woman once told me that eternity is a very long time. Nobody deserves to suffer forever. That is not justice. That is merely sadism under the guise of virtue!"

"Self-serving words," the bull-headed demon said dismissively.

Lelouch tilted his head in acknowledgement of the other being's words. "Perhaps my words are self-serving. That does not make them false."

"Do you understand why you are here?"

Lelouch lifted his lips into a sardonic smile. He replied, "Because I saved the world?"

He didn't even see the monster move.

Flashes of pain radiated from his cheek from where the whip had struck. Lelouch had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from screaming in agony. Blood flowed down his face as he struggled to not to vomit from the pain. Not that there was anything in his stomach to expel.

"Enough talk! I have no more time for your foolishness, silver-tongued serpent!"

It appeared that the time for small talk had ended. Lelouch supposed that he should have just meekly submitted in the first place in the hope of not making matters worse for himself, but that would have gone against every grain of his being. Lelouch vi Britannia- no, Lelouch Lamperouge, may have been many things, but he was not a coward.

Almost in a daze, Lelouch watched as a nail was positioned just above the wrist, between the radius and the ulna. The monster held his hammer with his other arm cocked back, but he did not strike.

Was this pause for dramatic effect? No, this was simply an attempt to heighten his prisoner's fear and give him a chance to cry out for mercy.

Lelouch lifted his chin defiantly.

"No threats? No pleas? No elegant arguments about the injustice of it all?"

That genteel voice had suddenly turned vicious and eager. Those pale blue eyes didn't seem quite so human anymore. These were the eyes of a demon. Cold, merciless. It was like staring into a bottomless ocean.

But this was nothing compared to looking into the eyes of Charles vi Britannia.

Lelouch gave his best 'Vice President' smile as he said politely, "I would really appreciate it if you could just let me go and forget about this conversation. It would really mean a lot to me."

It was not the most dignified solution, but he had already determined that sarcasm was an effective way to tick the big oaf off, so he decided to run with it. Judging by the rage on that oaf's face, he had succeeded.

Lelouch's body tensed in anticipation of the blow that he knew was coming.

"Yes, sir."

With a casual yank, the bull-headed man pulled away the ropes binding Lelouch to the cross. He gently caught Lelouch as his body fell forward and set him on the ground. Still in complete shock, Lelouch could only watch as his demonic host then turned around and walked away as if... as if...

_He had forgotten about him..._

Was it possible that his Geass was still working even now? Was this more than simply a cruel trick? Even if a Geass could follow one into the afterlife, were his captors so incompetent that they couldn't have devised a simple countermeasure like a blindfold? Or had his initial theory been more correct than he realized and there really were so many souls pouring into Hell that his Geass had been completely overlooked?

While his mind furiously paced through the ramifications of what this all meant, Lelouch watched as the demon made a strange gesture with his right hand. Almost immediately, the desert air began to shimmer and warp until there was an archway of golden light appearing about ten feet away from where Lelouch was lying. It was similar to the strange outpouring of light that he had seen at the opening of the cave he had woken up in. He now knew what it was.

It was a portal.

Not even looking behind him, the demon walked into the light and vanished. The opening then began to slowly fade away.

Lelouch did not know how this was happening or why, but he could not allow this opportunity to pass. It should have been impossible for him to get to his feet, but spirit bodies were apparently even more resilient than he thought.

Walking on legs that were not as steady as he would have liked even as they were more steady than they should have been for a man in his emaciated condition, he made his way toward the shrinking portal. There was a very real possibility that this was an elaborate plot set up to maneuver him to throw himself into the next layer of torment and despair.

So be it.


	3. Chapter 3

**-Chapter 3-**

"Lelouch vi Britannia orders all of you... to obey me!"

After exiting the portal, Lelouch had found himself in an auditorium-sized room being stared by at least twenty demons. Instinctively, he had cast a Geass on the entire audience for them to obey his commands. To his immense relief, it worked. He didn't know what he would have done if it turned out that none of the demons understood English.

The bull-headed demon wasn't present. It seemed that he had left for another appointment before Lelouch had arrived. Lelouch wasn't exactly broken up about this.

Lelouch casually strolled around the room which had a layout that resembled the mission control center of the Britannia Aeronautics and Space Administration. However, unlike the BASA center he'd visited as a child, each work area was being manned by actual demons and the computers they were working on looked like they were at least twenty years out of date.

The room was also as dark as the inside of a movie theater. Only the light coming out of the monitors kept the room from being pitch black. Lelouch had told the demons to resume whatever it was they were doing before he had arrived, so he was currently looking over the shoulders of a toad-man and a tiger-woman as they typed on their keyboards.

Lelouch could feel his body healing itself as he walked around the room. He could see his sunburned, peeling skin knitting itself back together before his eyes. Death apparently had its benefits after all. It seemed that in a way he had gotten closer to his old accomplice C.C. He hoped that she was all right wherever she was...

"Explain to me what you're doing," Lelouch ordered after it became clear that he wouldn't be able to read the demonic script that appeared on their screens.

Lelouch listened carefully to their explanations. He learned that this control room was only one out of thousands and that each one oversaw the 'processing and maintenance' of human souls within its jurisdiction. The reason that these particular demons understood English was that this particular sector of Hell contained the souls of all humans who had died within the last ten years, and the majority of those spoke either English or Mandarin.

Because of the explosion in the human population during the Twentieth Century and subsequently the recent increase in the growing number of deaths, Hell had been struggling to find a way to efficiently deal with an average of 155,000 souls entering Hell each day while still giving each soul the personal 'attention' he or she deserved.

That average had been much higher than usual lately (Lelouch felt a twinge of guilt upon hearing that), so Hell's automated systems had been forced to shuffle the incoming souls into generic, pre-formatted punishments until the Interrogation Corps could follow up with them. Once that soul's records were properly sorted out they could then enjoy the full extent of Hell's hospitality.

"How do you determine who belongs here?" Lelouch asked. This question was motivated purely by curiosity. He had no doubts about his suitability for being here.

It was the tiger-woman who responded. She said, "Every type of sin leaves a particular mark on the soul. That's how the system recognizes whether a human was a murderer, a thief, or an adulterer and sorts them accordingly into the appropriate Hellscape. Every human accumulates the marks of sin throughout their lifetime. Once a certain threshold has been crossed, they are damned."

"Show me my records," Lelouch commanded.

This took a bit longer than he'd expected. Lelouch had not yet been formally registered in Hell's records, so the demons had to narrow their searches to male souls who had died on the day and at the time that he had. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one's perspective, it was very easy to pick his record out of the remainder simply by looking for the soul record that listed the highest number of murders committed.

Now that they knew who he was, it was apparently simple for the demons to cross-reference his name with other records in their databases and compile a list of all the individuals who had died because of him.

"The list is not fully updated," the tiger-woman said apologetically. "The backlog of souls has caused some problems for our records-keeping divisions. The cataloging will take some time to complete."

Lelouch quietly asked to see an English translation of this list, and he sat impassively as he watched the list of names scroll across the screen. It was a very long list.

Lelouch fought back his rising gorge as the pile of names kept growing. He had never even met most of the people on that list, but he had killed them all the same. And this was only the incomplete version! He thought he had gotten over his sensitivity toward death a long time ago, but there was something about seeing his deeds in plain black and white that affected him more than he thought it would.

He had known intellectually that he had killed many people personally and through proxies. He had known that he was a monster, but he had not truly _known_until the evidence of his folly was staring him straight in the face. Just like with the Narita incident. It seemed that he never learned.

For the first time since he'd died, he allowed his doubts about Zero Requiem to surface. He didn't doubt the success of his plan. The actions he had committed before his death and the plans he'd left in place for Suzaku to carry out after his demise ensured that the world would be at peace for the foreseeable future. In the guise of eliminating his competition, Lelouch had spent his two month reign as Emperor systematically conquering the world with a speed and brutality that would have made his father green with envy.

It went without saying that the collateral damage had been high.

While Schneizel would have been content to have the world remain in stasis under the threat of the Doom of Damocles, Lelouch had chosen to become the personification of Doom itself just long enough to show the world the horrors of total war. Then he had released the world with his death and the hopes of a better future.

With Nunally, Zero, and the Geass-controlled Schneizel in control of the only formidable military presence left on the planet, the recovery from the Demon Emperor's reign would be swift. The Britannian Empire, now much smaller and humbler, would be forced to make amends for its mad ruler under the eye of the reconstituted United Federation of Nations. The world would still be full of poverty, racism, and strife, but there was now a real opportunity to start creating a better world through peaceful means.

Lelouch was as certain now as he was then that Zero Requiem was an efficient and effective plan for recreating the world, but... had it been the _best _plan? If he had known Nunally was still alive, would he have created a different plan? Would a plan that took longer to come to fruition but took fewer lives have been better in the long run?

But there was no point pondering hypotheticals. He had done what was necessary to create the peaceful world that his sister had wanted. The ends justified the means, didn't it? Wasn't there even a story in the Bible about how God once nearly wiped out the human race in order to start the world anew?

_But you are not God,_Lelouch quietly said to himself.

Lelouch knew that he was being stupid by sitting here in this darkened room thinking about a past that couldn't be changed, but it wasn't like he had any pressing matters on his calendar. Where was he going to go? What purpose did he have now that he was dead and had lost everyone that he had ever cared about? It was not enough simply to survive. One had to have a reason for living, or in his case, existing. There was no point otherwise.

He had jumped through that portal out of instinct, but now he wondered if he should have just stayed on that cross. It hadn't been a pleasant experience by any means, but at least his existence had been simple. Now it was complicated again. Lelouch rubbed his eyes. He was just so damned tired.

"Attention! Incoming transport from Sector 23G. ETA is 20 seconds. Attention! Incoming..."

Lelouch ignored the loudspeaker even as the activity level of the demons around him increased. He wasn't concerned. He would just Geass whomever came through into forgetting that it had seen him and to continue on its merry way.

The portal flashed into existence and a dark figure appeared from its opening.

Lelouch stood up from his seat and thrust his right arm out dramatically as he said, "Stay where you are! Lelouch vi Britannia commands you to... oh, crap."

"Who are you, human? What are you doing here?"

Standing before him was the minotaur from the dessert. The one that he had already cast a Geass on before.

"Defend me!" Lelouch shouted as he saw the demon unsheath the axe on his back.

The obedient demons under his control tried their best, but despite their superior numbers they were desk jockeys- not a group particularly suited for combat. The bull-headed monster swatted them aside like flies. The demonic cannon fodder were managing to slow his attacker down, but they wouldn't hold him off for long.

Lelouch frantically tried to think of a way out of his predicament, but his strength was in creating strategies and there was no time to think of one. He probably wouldn't die from whatever the demon was going to do to him, but he definitely wasn't going to enjoy it either.

Lelouch squared his shoulders and stood with his back straight as the demon finally made his way over to him. He wondered if a part of him had wanted this to happen. Didn't he deserve whatever he had coming to him? Even so, he was repulsed by the idea of meekly submitting to his fate no matter how much he deserved it.

The demon hefted the axe over his head and smiled grimly. He said, "I don't know how you got in here, human, but-"

The demon's body was suddenly lying on the floor with no head.

Lelouch blinked in surprise. One moment he had been about to be slaughtered and the next moment he was looking at a corpse. There had only been those two moments. At least those were the only moments that he had perceived. Looking around and seeing that all the other demons in the room were lying dead on the floor only lent credence to the theory forming in his mind.

It was imposs- no, it was actually all too possible.

"Rolo?"

A young boy stepped out of the shadows with a welcoming smile on his face. He said, "Hello, Brother."

Lelouch was surprised by seeing Rolo in front of him, but he was not surprised at all to see that Rolo was a fellow inmate in Hell. He had mixed feelings at seeing his fake sibling again. He had despised the boy for daring to replace Nunally, but that had been an abstract hate. A irrational hatred that he would have directed toward anyone in Rolo's place. He hadn't given much thought about Rolo as a person, except for occasional feelings of grudging respect for the boy's abilities and contempt for his mindless loyalty.

Then Rolo had killed Shirley, and that irrational hatred became all too rational. Lelouch had spent countless hours thinking of gruesome ways for this pawn of his to die. He hadn't thought that he could hate someone as much as he hated his father, but Rolo had managed to earn his wrath.

And then Rolo had died for him, and Lelouch didn't know what to feel.

Lelouch had known about Rolo's twisted affection for him and that he was probably the closest thing that Rolo had ever had to a real family. Even so, he still would never have imagined that the child assassin would give up his life for a man that he had to have known on some level was just using him.

He had underestimated just how broken Rolo was on the inside. But Lelouch was also broken too somewhere deep down, and maybe it was that commonality that made them brothers even if they weren't related by blood.

Lelouch put a smile on his face that was only half-feigned. He said, "Thank you for saving me, Rolo. It seems that even in death I still need you to come to my rescue. But what are you doing here?"

Rolo looked at him with a puzzled expression as he said, "I'm here to help you to conquer Hell."


	4. Chapter 4

**-Chapter 4-**

Rolo had woken up on a mountain of corpses. That had not been a very comfortable experience.

The boy did his best to ignore the stench of death and decay around him as he tried to figure out where he was. He distinctly remembered dying. He was intimately familiar with the process even if he had never been in that particular position himself before.

Rolo placed his fingers over his pulse points and then directly on his chest. No, his heart was not beating. Oddly enough, he was still breathing. On a whim, he decided to stop.

After a few minutes of this, he decided to resume breathing. It didn't hurt not to and he clearly didn't need to draw in oxygen any longer, but it just felt too strange to not breathe.

Didn't that mean that he was dead? Was that why his brother had abandoned him in what appeared to be a mass graveyard? He wondered if he was a zombie like in those movies that his brother and his friend Rivalz had forced him to watch. The atmosphere was certainly appropriate for a horror movie. The sky was grey and cloudy, and there was no sign of life anywhere within viewing distance. Beyond the 'mountain' that he was sitting on, there was only a wasteland of dead grass and rotted tree husks. There weren't even any carrion around.

Rolo suddenly realized that his locket, the first present that anyone had ever given him, was gone. He frantically searched through the pockets of his school uniform and even through the pockets of the dead woman he was sitting on before he forced himself to give up. With a sigh of regret, he turned his mind to more important matters. Where was he? Where was Lelouch?

He climbed down the bloody mountain of rotting bodies to look for answers.

Rolo had walked for about half an hour before he sensed that he was being watched. He turned around and standing directly behind him was a humanoid that appeared to be the progeny of a wolf and a human. The beast was covered in light brown fur and appeared to be male.

He looked at it curiously. Was this a wolfman like in the movies? He had been under the impression that such creatures were fictional. He knew that he had lived a rather sheltered existence, but he thought he would have known if there was such creatures living on Earth.

And why was the wolfman wearing sunglasses when there was no sun?

"You're not an easy one to scare, are you, Rolo?"

"How do you know my name?" Rolo asked tersely.

The wolfman smiled, revealing two rows of sharpened fangs. He said, "I know many things about you, boy of many identities. Rolo Haliburton. Rolo Lamperouge. Member of the Geass Order."

Rolo's body tensed. Nobody was supposed to know about the Order.

That razor-sharp smile grew even wider. The monster said, "Not many demons these days can recognize the spiritual signature of a Geass user. One can hardly blame them. It's such a rare phenomenon. It's quite outrageous that a few dozen users have suddenly appeared so recently. The Geass Order, I believe it was called. My master will be quite pleased that I have managed to snare another specimen for his collection."

Rolo was barely paying attention. His eyes were busy scanning the area for a potential weapon. He was also running mental simulations of what action to take if it turned out that his Geass was no longer operating.

"Free feel to try to use your Geass on me. I am interested in seeing what form it takes. Not that it will do you any good," the wolfman said with a smirk as he tapped his eyewear. "In my experience, most Geass powers rely on some form of eye contact and the ones that don't tend to be defensive in nature and are not very powerf-"

The wolfman broke off as he looked down and saw the sharpened tree branch sticking out of his chest.

"Ho-how?" the monster asked as he fell to his knees.

"It appears that you do not know as much about Geass as you think you do," Rolo said and then he wondered why he said it. There was no need to explain anything to a dying man- or creature. Maybe Brother's sense of drama was rubbing off on him.

What was more interesting that he had not felt any of the strain he was used to feeling when he activated his Geass, which raised some interesting possibilities...

Since the immediate threat had been neutralized, Rolo continued to wander the bleak countryside. It took a few more random encounters with these 'demons' and the subsequent interrogations and killings before Rolo determined that he really was dead and he was in Hell.

It took warding off a few dozen groups of attackers that came at him in increasing numbers and at increasing frequencies over the next few days before he realized that the demons had no effective way of blocking his Geass. And if the wolfman had been telling the truth, then most of his adversaries probably didn't even know what they were up against.

After a few close calls, including one in which he had to regenerate his left hand, he kept his Geass active all the time with a sphere of influence in every direction so that nobody could sneak up on him. Rolo could activate his Geass for as long as he wanted without ill effect, and, although he often felt hungry and sleepy, he found that he didn't actually need to eat or sleep.

This tactic would only delay the inevitable though. Sooner or later, one of these demons would realize that his power didn't affect non-living objects and then he would either be bombed or sniped and then captured before he could revive himself. Assuming that the inhabitants of Hell had such weapons, of course.

The solution to this problem was actually quite simple. Rolo's main skillset was in assassination but to be a good assassin one also had to be knowledgeable in infiltration. So he allowed himself to be captured.

* * *

><p>"What happened after that?" Lelouch asked as he listened to Rolo's story in horrified fascination. A chill had gone down his spine when he realized that his 'brother' was now effectively invincible. It was fortunate that the boy still seemed to hold him in high regard.<p>

Rolo's story had also been quite enlightening. It sounded like that there were only a few demons who knew about Geass and they hoarded that information in order to make use of that knowledge themselves. It was to be expected that Hell was not a place where openness and transparency would be considered virtues. Lelouch supposed that if he had waited around long enough to be registered and processed that he would have been 'collected' by now.

Rolo gave a small shrug in response to Lelouch's question. He replied, "There's not much more to tell. I was bound and gagged and taken to a laboratory. I suppose they thought that as long as I couldn't move or speak that I wouldn't be able to use my power."

"They were wrong, of course," Lelouch said with a small smile.

"They were going to put me in a cell. I couldn't allow that, so I froze everyone in the room. It took me some time to get out of my restraints even with my training, but I had all the time in the world. After that, I persuaded my captors to help me. I spoke with the head scientist first. It was surprising how much he resisted, especially considering how I-"

Lelouch was not a squeamish man, but he really did not want to know the details of what that 'persuasion' entailed. He quickly said, "I believe I can safely assume that the result of your... negotiations was the ability to travel around Hell undetected. You said earlier that you're here to help me. That implies that you've been looking for me. Considering the vastness of Hell and the rather convenient timing of your arrival, I suspect that some type of tracking program was activated when my file was accessed and you were alerted about my location."

"That is exactly correct, Brother," Rolo replied with obvious admiration in his voice.

Lelouch leaned back in his chair and regarded the boy before him over his steepled fingers. Once again, the depth of Rolo's loyalty surprised and touched him. He wondered if the boy had any relation to Jeremiah Gottwald. They were both stubborn idiots and two of the best followers that he had ever had.

He struggled to reconcile the conflicting emotions inside him. He still deeply resented Rolo for killing Shirley, but he had to admit that her death was as much his fault as it was the boy's. Lelouch had manipulated Rolo's feelings to co-opt him as a tool, and he had never given any further thought as to how unstable a child assassin with a big brother complex would be. Lelouch had never considered the obvious reaction that such a person, someone who clung desperately to the illusion of a normal school life, would have toward a threat to his fragile and precious situation.

After what Lelouch had yelled at him after he thought Nunally had died, Rolo would have been extremely justified in allowing the Black Knights to kill him, but the boy had saved his life. Even now, in death, Rolo was still trying to serve him. Lelouch wondered if he should be pleased or dismayed that even Rolo with his puppy dog loyalty had been convinced that Lelouch would end up in Hell sooner or later.

Part of him wondered suspiciously if this Rolo was not simply some demon in disguise. As Lelouch had said earlier, Rolo's appearance was rather convenient. He quickly dismissed this thought. Constant paranoia about the state of reality was a quick route toward madness. He would simply have to accept what he was seeing until he received evidence showing otherwise.

That didn't mean that he had to be stupid about this.

"We have certainly come a long way from the peaceful days at Ashford. I can still remember Nina's ridiculous farewell Cupid Day event."

Rolo looked confused. He said, "Wasn't that festival organized by President Milly?"

"Oh, that's right," Lelouch said. "The last few months of my life were rather hectic and then to wake up here... It's no wonder that my memories are a little hazy these days. Thank you for the reminder, Rolo."

Behind the dismayed expression on his face, Lelouch smiled. It looked like he wouldn't have to use his Geass after all.

An expression of sympathy crossed Rolo's face. He said, "I'm sorry that I couldn't find you sooner, Brother."

"Don't worry about it," Lelouch replied.

He looked around the control room that was filled with demonic corpses. He said, "I suppose we should get going. Somebody's probably wondering by now why this room has gone silent."

Rolo shrugged. "There is no hurry. My Geass will stop any intruders."

"So will mine," Lelouch reminded the boy. "It is still best not to get complacent. It is possible that there are creatures in Hell that are immune to Geass. I do not wish to press our luck."

"Of course. I should have thought of that," Rolo said. He pulled a rectangular device out of his pocket. It looked like a cheap Blackberry flip phone. Since Rolo was presumably not trying to make a phone call, that must have been the machine that allowed Rolo to transport around Hell at will.

As Rolo fiddled with his gadget, Lelouch thought about what his 'younger brother' had said about helping him conquer Hell. Was that how Rolo saw him? As some kind of power hungry maniac who couldn't be happy unless he was out fighting wars and creating chaos? Did he really not understand that everything he had done had been for Nunally's sake?

But he was honest enough to admit that he also enjoyed creating brilliant strategies and testing his mettle against the full might of the world. Even if he had no reason to do so, trying to take over Hell would be an interesting challenge in itself.

Lelouch mentally shrugged to himself. It was as good a way to kill time as any.

"It's ready," Rolo announced.

Lelouch came out of his musings and looked over at the opening that Rolo had created. This portal was different from the ones that Lelouch had traveled through. Those portals had been windows of blinding light. Rolo's portal was a ragged maelstrom of blues and purples. It reminded Lelouch of one of those wormholes that one would see in a speculative fiction drama. It was like looking at living geometry with the lines and curves of color.

"So where are we going?" Lelouch asked as he stepped into the opening.

Rolo said something, but Lelouch didn't hear it as he felt his body get spun around like a top. After a indeterminable amount of time, Lelouch hit the ground with a mild grunt of surprise. A few seconds later, he saw Rolo land next to him.

"Not the most comfortable mode of travel," Lelouch muttered to Rolo as he got to his feet. Biting back a slight groan, Lelouch glanced around to get a feel for where they were now. He had to blink several times before he could accept what he saw.

He and Rolo were standing alone in the courtyard of Ashford Academy.

"What on earth is going on?" Lelouch said as he spun around trying to see every detail of the buildings surrounding him.

"We are not on Earth," Rolo replied calmly. "This building was constructed by the demons."

Lelouch calmed himself after hearing Rolo's words and forced himself to evaluate the building more closely. Once he did he could see that while there was a more than superficial resemblance to the school that he had grown up attending there was also an air of _wrongness _around it.

The doors and windows in his line of sight were slightly too wide. The school buildings were closer together than he remembered, which gave the courtyard an air of crampness. There were other off-kilter details as well like the shades of paint on the wall and the number of trees in the area. It was as the builders had seen some depictions of the school on some postcards or brochures and then attempted to reconstruct that image from scratch.

What really clinched the matter for him that this was not Ashford Academy was that the wall that Lelouch had ordered a female student to mark daily was bare and pristine. It staggered his mind that the denizens of Hell would go to all the trouble of reproducing his school. He supposed that this meant that a great number of Ashford students ended up being damned by their petty dramas, intrigues, and cruelties. He probably shouldn't be surprised by that.

High school was often referred to as a living Hell after all...

Lelouch stared warily at the windows overlooking the courtyard. It was a little eerie standing out in the open like this. Even though nobody appeared to be around, he would feel better once he and Rolo went inside. Then he would ask the younger boy his reason for bringing him to this place.

"Help! Somebody help me!"

Lelouch whirled in the direction of the scream. It came from inside the school.

"Please, stop! Don't hurt me anymore! Why are you doing this?"

Lelouch could hear his heartbeat pulsing in his ears as the sound of a sobbing voice seemed to be coming closer.

It was a female voice. A familiar voice.

No, it couldn't be...

Rolo was instantly standing in front of him with a dagger in his right hand. Lelouch knew that the boy was moments away from activating his Geass.

"No, wait!"

He almost didn't recognize the strangled, panicky voice that came out of his mouth.

Rolo turned to look at Lelouch with a puzzled expression.

The southeast doors to the courtyard burst open. A figure came running through.

He saw a glimpse of green eyes and orange hair...

"Shirley!"

The fleeing girl came to a halt a mere twelve feet away from him. She was trembling so badly that her hair had obscured her face, and, for a brief moment, Lelouch thought he may have been mistaken about her identity. Then the hair moved and he saw that it was indeed Shirley Fenette, the girl who had died in his arms.

She slowly took a few, shaky steps toward him then stopped as if she couldn't dare to believe what was in front of her.

Lelouch forced himself to smile and hoped that Shirley wouldn't notice his heart breaking once again.

"Shirley, it's me. Lelouch."

A look of joy came over her face washing out the fear and the pain that was there before. He wondered if he had a similar look on his face. Lelouch felt a little embarrassed to be wearing a loincloth before Shirley who was wearing her school uniform with the yellow jacket and green tie. She looked so happy, so carefree, so _Shirley_, like before the horrors of Geass, before the war, before everything had gone so wrong...

She reached out to him with tears in her eyes saying softly, "Lelouch..."

Her body jerked.

A stain of red blossomed across Shirley's stomach.

With his ears still ringing from the gunshot, Lelouch helplessly watched as Shirley fell forward into his arms.


	5. Chapter 5

**-Chapter 5-**

Lelouch wanted to close his eyes and pretend that none of this was happening. He wanted to get away from this madness and go back to the days when he was just an ordinary student with grandiose dreams of destroying Britannia. But he knew that was not going to happen.

After kneeling to the ground and placing Shirley's head in his lap, Lelouch looked over at Rolo with blazing eyes, and he said with quiet intensity, "Find the shooter and bring him to me. Alive."

Rolo gave a curt nod then he ran into the school.

"Lelouch..."

Lelouch grasped the hand that Shirley was weakly holding out, and he said, "I'm here, Shirley."

"I'm happy to see you again even if the circumstances aren't quite how I would wish it," Shirley said with a lopsided smile.

"I'm sorry," Lelouch said softly.

"It's not your fault," Shirley insisted.

But it is, Lelouch thought. He looked at the puddle of blood staining the grass, and he wondered how many times she had died from gunfire. Hell certainly loved its little ironies.

"Will you still be here when I wake up?" Shirley asked.

Lelouch nodded, not trusting himself to speak at that moment.

"I knew that we'd be together again," Shirley whispered before she closed her eyes and grew still.

Even though he knew that her death would only be a temporary one, Lelouch couldn't help but wonder if he would ever talk to her again. Perhaps it was better if she never woke up again. She looked so peaceful lying there. What good would come of her waking up if all she had to look forward to was an eternity of suffering and despair?

How many times did Fate intend to have him watch her die? He couldn't bear the thought of Shirley suffering anymore because of him.

She didn't belong in Hell.

The sound of grunting caused Lelouch to look up, and he saw that Rolo was slowly dragging a large creature into the courtyard. It resembled a giant, furry bat.

Lelouch gently shifted Shirley so that her body was lying on the grass before he got to his feet and walked over to where the demon was. He grimly thought about what a sight he must be covered in Shirley's blood.

"This is the weapon," Rolo said, holding up an ordinary 9 millimeter handgun for Lelouch's inspection. Lelouch felt like his blood was going to boil with rage just at the sight of it. He turned his gaze back toward the demon.

"Unfreeze that thing," Lelouch said tersely.

Rolo nodded.

The bat-like creature blinked its eyes and screeched in confusion. It rolled over and was in the processing of standing up when its eyes met Lelouch's gaze.

"Obey me," Lelouch said as he cast his Geass.

The man-bat's body stiffened for a moment then the creature said dully in a gravelly voice, "Yes, sir. What is your command?"

Lelouch's first impulse was to command Shirley's tormentor to kill itself, but he fought it back. He needed information first.

"What is your name?"

"Gjormu," the creature replied as it full straightened up. It towered over Lelouch by two feet. He could see that while this Gjormu had a general humanoid shape, its frame was grossly distorted. It resembled one of those ancient gargoyle statutes with its demonic visage and leathery wings. But its hands were surprisingly human-like. It would have had no difficulty in grasping and operating a firearm.

"Did you shoot this girl?" Lelouch asked already knowing the answer.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Shirley Fenette is to be punished for her sins."

Lelouch's tone, which had not been warm to begin with, turned positively icy. He asked, "What sins would those be?"

"The attempted murder of Villetta Nu."

"She didn't actually kill her!"

"That is irrelevant. It was mere happenstance that the woman survived. Sin is determined by intent, not by result."

Lelouch snorted in disgust. "Really? Matthew 5:28? _'Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.'_With such a strict code of moral conduct, I'm guessing that not many people make it into Heaven,"

"You are correct."

Lelouch was chilled by that reply, and he was briefly stunned into silence by the implications of that statement. Then he wondered why he felt so surprised. He had lived his entire life in a world gone mad. In his more cynical moments, he had wondered if the absurdity and insanity around him was merely a reflection of the mindset of its creator. Either God was evil or this Lucifer entity was vastly more powerful than he had imagined. He wasn't sure which possibility was more disturbing...

No, now was not the time for metaphysics. He didn't have time to ponder what the literal existence of Hell meant for the idea of a kind and merciful God. Besides, he was talking to a demon. Not exactly a species with a reputation for honesty. Maybe Gjormu couldn't lie to him, but that didn't mean that it hadn't been lied to itself.

The problem he had to focus on now what he was going to do about Shirley. He was still appalled by her presence here. Shirley didn't have an evil bone in her body. She had made mistakes but not unforgivable ones. She did not deserve to suffer forever.

"Shirley was protecting my life," Lelouch said quietly.

"Yes, she protected the life of a person she knew to be a serial murderer."

Lelouch could see that further argument on this subject would be futile. He decided to change tracks. He asked, "Tell me, is there a way out of Hell?"

The demon said nothing. That meant that it didn't know.

"Do you know in what part of Hell that this Lord Lucifer resides?"

The demon did not know. A few more questions in this vein revealed that this demon did not know much about the entity for which it worked. Lelouch was not terribly surprised by this. Gjormu was clearly just a low-level flunky in the vast demonic organization. Lelouch did, however, learn some interesting tidbits about the general layout of Hell and how its bureaucracy operated.

"Can your kind be killed?"

"Yes, but not permanently."

The information that he was learning from Gjormu was certainly useful, but it wasn't anything that he probably couldn't have learned from any other demon. Lelouch realized that he was stalling. He was keeping himself from asking a certain question because he was afraid to know the answer. But it was a question that he had to ask.

"What have you done to Shirley?"

Lelouch listened with a blank expression as the demon described the various ways that Shirley had died at its hands. Because Gjormu was being thematic, all of the murders had been gun-related.

There were quick deaths and slow, lingering ones. There were deaths from single shots from revolvers and multiple shots from full automatics. There were deaths from sniping and deaths at point blank range. There were days of non-stop terror in which deaths came instantly one after another, and then there were week-long hunts through the school full of near 'misses' and narrow 'escapes.'

Lelouch clamped down on the fury boiling within him and forced himself to listen clinically to Gjormu's words. When the demon finally finished speaking, Lelouch considered his next action.

"There is one more thing I need to know," Lelouch said. He gave the bat-demon a hard stare before he asked, "Tell me how you really feel. Did you take pleasure in what you did?"

"Very much so," Gjormu replied without hesitation in the same toneless voice he had been speaking in the whole time. "The girl is stronger than she looks. She never stopped trying to resist and escape. She only sunk into insanity twice in her time here. It was gratifying to encounter a modern human who didn't give up hope at the slightest bit of pain."

"You admired her strength," Lelouch said with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

Gjormu smiled. It was not a pretty sight.

"Humans break so easily these days. Even with the regenerative effect that prevents permanent mental and physical damage, there comes a point when a human's spirit is so crushed that he will meekly accept anything I do to him. I had not yet reached that point with this girl."

Lelouch had asked the demon to be honest with him, but he had the feeling that even without the power of his Geass Gjormu would have been only too happy to tell him of his exploits. The yellowish eyes that peered back at him were not the eyes of a flunky just doing its job or a detached professional. They were the eyes of a monster.

"What were your plans to 'break' this girl's spirit?"

"I was thinking that it was about time to turn to more traditional methods of torment before you appeared. The girl is not Japanese but she did die in Japan, so I had plans to do some research on this region of the world. I thought it would be appropriate to requisition the use of a tentacle-fiend from a friend of mine to-"

Gjormu's words was cut off by the sound of gunfire obliterating its kneecap.

The bat-like creature gave a roar of pain and rage as it fell onto its remaining leg. With a cry of fury, it lunged toward Lelouch.

"Don't even think about harming me."

The demon's claws stopped inches away from Lelouch's face. It growled then turned its fury-filled eyes toward Rolo.

"In fact, don't even think about harming another human being ever again."

Lelouch stared down at the groaning demon and observed the rate of healing as bone and flesh formed and knitted together to recreate the kneecap. He waited patiently for Gjormu's pitiful cries to subside then he shot it in the head. He fired again and again until he was out of bullets and the head no longer resembled a head.

Then he dropped the useless gun and turned away. The demon would reform soon enough, but he needed the time to think.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

This is the darkest chapter I have ever written. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

For those curious about how I came up with such a messed up story, I should probably mention that the _Inferno/__Escape from __Hell_ books by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were an inspiration for this story.


	6. Chapter 6

**-Chapter 6-**

Lelouch walked over to Shirley's body lied and saw that her wound had healed and she was merely sleeping now. Her face was free of fear and despair. While it did not bear the expression of joy that she had earlier upon seeing him, it looked peaceful. Lelouch wondered when was the last time she had felt peace of any kind.

For that matter, when had he?

It was probably when he had been dying. The dying itself was not a pleasant experience, but he had felt a kind of serenity knowing that he would not to carry the burdens of his decisions around any longer. But he had been wrong. There was no easy escape from the consequences of his actions.

Ever since Euphemia died as a result of his folly, he had known that there would be no happy ending for him. But he had failed to comprehend how much of a failure he would become. He may have brought the world peace, but he had utterly failed to protect the people closest to him.

He had failed to preserve Nunally's innocence.

He had failed to keep his promise to C.C.

He had broken Suzaku, his first and best friend. He had destroyed the mother he had mourned for most of his life and turned the only brother he had ever respected into a slave.

He had failed to protect Shirley.

The power of the king was indeed a lonely one. He had such good intentions... but everyone knew where that road led.

It had been so simple in the beginning. With his vast intelligence and the power of Geass, he had known that bringing down Britannia would be inevitable. He knew that it wouldn't be simple, but he had never expected that his objective would destroy his life and the lives of everyone he cared about.

When had he stopped seeing the war he had started as a mere chess game? The answer came to him immediately. When Shirley had told him that her father had died as a result of his 'brilliant' strategy, his world had changed forever.

People were going to die because of his decisions. They had died because of his decisions. It wasn't like he hadn't known this when he started. It had just never occurred to him that someone he knew would get involved, which was extremely naive. He was trying to start a rebellion in Japan. If he kept going down the path he was on, then the next funeral he would attend could be Milly's or Sayoko's.

Of course the next funeral he would attend ended up belonging to Shirley.

Before that happened... back when he had been holding Shirley's trembling body in the rain, he came the closest he had ever gotten to deciding to give up his mad quest. And if his only motivation had been vengeance then he may very well have given up. Maybe. There was no way to know for certain.

But he had another motivation. A promise he had made to his sister. A dream of a better world. He would do anything to create a safer world for Nunally. Sitting in his shower trying to wash the stains on his soul away, he had arrived at a decision.

When he created the Black Knights he told them that they would not be terrorists but soldiers in a war. And the major difference between the two was one that he had never needed to spell out because it had instinctively been understood by everyone. It was the understanding that wars had rules and lines that should not be crossed.

Yet even from the beginning Lelouch had never taken the rules of war seriously. He was fighting against an enemy who ruled two-thirds of the world with very little in the way of manpower or resources. He could not afford to give up advantages for the sake of abstract morality.

Lelouch prided himself for his intelligence, and because he was an intelligent man he was very good at rationalizing. And like many intelligent men before him, he had fallen for the most seductive of rationalizations.

That the ends justify the means.

Lelouch had always been a ruthless person. It had taken surprisingly little effort to turn himself into a monster. He became the man in the shadows who did dirty deeds so that the innocent could thrive. He would follow the slippery slope all the way to the end and sacrifice everything to shield people like Shirley and Nunally from the darkness.

The images of Shirley's bloody corpse and Nunally's tear streaked face flashed before him.

That plan had not worked out very well.

"Brother, the demon has finished healing and will wake up soon. What do you plan to do?" Rolo asked.

What did he plan to do?

Lelouch pondered the question as he walked over to where Gjormu's body lied. He glared down at the creature with anger and disgust as he watched the bat-like abomination regain consciousness and struggle to rise. He pushed the demon back down by placing his foot on its chest.

Gjormu raised its arm as if to move Lelouch's foot from its torso, but then its eyes glazed over as if it forgot what it was trying to do. It appeared that Lelouch's last command was working.

What did he plan to do to a creature that could not be killed? It was almost frightening how quickly his mind conjured up various ways to turn an immortal into a quivering, boneless blob of flesh that had no tongue with which to scream...

Shirley gave a tiny sigh and rolled over, curling her arms to her chest.

Lelouch forced back his morbid thoughts. He may have been many things, but he was not a sadist. He did not take pleasure in torturing helpless beings even if this particular one deserved every bit of cruelty he could imagine and more.

But Shirley wouldn't have wanted that. She wouldn't have wanted him to further tarnish his soul for her sake. She had believed in him even after she had recovered her memories and realized that he was Zero.

He wondered what she would think of him now after what he had done as the Demon Emperor. He tried to imagine Shirley looking at him with horror. It was depressingly easy to do so. All he had to do was remember Nunally's eyes.

Lelouch had dreamed for years of the day when Nunally would miraculously regain her sight. He had never imagined that the first time in years that he would be able to look into his sister's eyes that they would be filled with disgust and accusation. There had been hurt and sadness there as well.

The moment that he had seen his sister lose all respect for him would be imprinted in his mind forever.

He had never wanted Nunally to see the darkness within him. He did not think he could bear it if Shirley were to turn such eyes upon him. No, he had committed enough atrocities under the guise of self-sacrifice.

He could not, however, simply allow Shirley's tormentor to go its way without punishment.

"Look at me," Lelouch said softly.

Black, frightened eyes met his gaze.

"You have harmed someone very dear to me. The suffering I would inflict on you for that would be legendary. Perhaps my technique would lack the finesse of an experienced torturer like yourself, but I think that you'd find that I can be very... creative."

Lelouch paused for a moment to let that sink in.

"It is, however, partially my fault that Shirley is in this position. And I know that vengeance on you, while satisfying for me, will not make her happy. So it is your lucky day, Gjormu. I am going to be merciful."

Gjormu did not appear to be reassured by these words.

"I know that I cannot physically destroy you," Lelouch said slowly. "So I am going to do the next best thing."

Ten minutes later, the demon formerly known as Gjormu stumbled away from the school courtyard. Its mind was filled with confusion and not much else.

Tabula Rasa. Blank slate. Millennia of memories of inflicting pain and horror were gone with just a few simple words. What would become of the demon now in a world he did not remember was not Lelouch's affair nor did he truly care.

Some people would view his actions as cruel believing identity death to be worse than physical death in some ways. Lelouch could sympathize somewhat with such a viewpoint. The year he had spent believing himself to be an ordinary high school student because of his father's memory tampering was not something he liked to dwell on. It made him furious to think about how he had forgotten his goals, his power, and even his own sister. And yet...

He had been happy.

To be free of the burden of his memories would not be such a horrible thing. Even with how things had turned out, he still didn't regret erasing Shirley's memory of attempted murder. She had been happy, and she would have remained happy if not for Jeremiah's Geass Canceler.

He only wished that he could use his Geass upon Shirley's memories one more time.

"Brother, what do we do now?" Rolo asked, startling Lelouch from his thoughts.

"What you've expected me to do from the beginning. I am going to be taking over Hell," Lelouch replied with narrowed eyes. "Because I will be damned twice if I am going to allow Nunally and other people I care about to be condemned to an eternity of this absurdity!"

It pained Lelouch to admit it, but there was no other possible outcome under the current system. Nunally had killed so many with Damocles. Nina and Suzaku had killed millions more with FLEIJA. Perhaps such actions merited some form of punishment, But not Hell. He would not allow it.

"You didn't say 'we'," Rolo noted

"No, I didn't."

"You don't trust me." Again, this was a statement, not a question.

Lelouch stared at Rolo's blank expression. But despite the boy's skill and control, he couldn't manage to entirely cover up the hurt in his eyes. Lelouch found himself softening slightly. He had not forgotten what the boy had done for him, and his plans would go more smoothly with assistance.

Lelouch's eyes flickered over to Shirley's still form. Still...

"Rolo, you would do anything for me, correct?"

"Of course!" Rolo instantly replied. He sounded affronted that Lelouch would ever question his loyalty.

"Why?"

"Because you're my brother."

"That doesn't tell me anything. What do those words mean to you?"

Rolo was silent for a few moments before he said, "It means I have someone in the world who I want to protect. Someone I care about. Someone I want to make happy. I've never had family before. I was taught attachments like that would make me weaker. And that's true. I am weaker. But somehow... I feel like I'm stronger as well. Does that make sense?"

It did.

"You do understand that we're not related by blood?" Lelouch asked, not unkindly.

Rolo's gaze did not falter. He said evenly, "I have been told that family is usually a matter of blood, but it can sometimes be a matter of choice."

That sounded like something Milly would say.

"I'm glad that you said that," Lelouch said quietly. "Because that means that you will understand me perfectly when I tell you that I consider Shirley Fenette to be part of my family."

Rolo's eyes widened before he looked away with an expression of shame. And Lelouch knew that the boy understood.

"Tell me why you killed her."

He didn't bother saying that he wanted the truth. He didn't need to do that.

Rolo still couldn't look at him. He said in a low voice, "I was afraid. Afraid that you wouldn't need me anymore. I had nothing before meeting you. I know that you used me, but I didn't mind because you use everybody. And because you made me feel like I mattered. I saw that disappearing, so I..."

"Would you do it again?" Lelouch asked.

"No," Rolo replied, and there was no hesitation in his voice.

"Why not?" Lelouch asked skeptically.

"Because... you weren't the same after I killed your friend. You almost allowed yourself to be killed when you thought your sister was dead. I... wasn't enough for you to want to live."

Lelouch could read the pain and the sincerity in Rolo's eyes, and he knew that he could trust him. That was good because Lelouch didn't think that he could do this without him.

_My friends... my family... they're the reasons that I can do what I do... live how I live... without them I really am just a monster... _

"I will allow you to help me."

Rolo straightened up and he said, "I would be honored to be at your side."

"You won't be at my side."

At Rolo's crest-fallen look, Lelouch said in a reassuring tone, "You will be doing something much more important. You're going to be my eyes and ears. I need you to find a place where you have access to the network and from where you can easily hide and defend yourself and Shirley."

Rolo frowned. "Shirley?"

Lelouch nodded curtly. "Yes, I need you to protect her. I also need you to use your Geass to keep her from waking up. You will not allow her to regain consciousness until I tell you to do so."

He would create a peaceful afterlife for his sister and his friends no matter how long it took. He had failed to make his sister happy when he was alive. Even now, he doubted very much that she was happy. He would not fail her again.

Perhaps this wasn't the best way to handle things. Perhaps it would have been better for him to stay by Shirley's side and do his best to help her pull herself back together. But this was bigger than the two of them. Fighting against the forces of Hell was more than about their survival or even Nunally's survival. It was a second chance at making a better world for everyone.

It was also the only way he could think of to atone for ruining the lives of everyone he had ever cared about.

This time he wasn't going to let his ego get in the way. This time he would do it right. He was more experienced and wiser than the last time he had tried to topple an empire. In addition, he would have plenty of allies in Hell this time around. Some of the best strategists and tacticians in history were available. They only needed to have their chains loosened. Most of the Britannian royal family was probably down here as well. That was a somewhat disturbing thought, but he couldn't afford to ignore potential assets.

This was not going to be easy. This was probably going to be vastly more difficult than taking over the world. But he would succeed. Not simply because he had a Geass. But because he was Lelouch and Zero and the Demon Emperor, and nothing could stop him when he put his mind to it.

What was that old Milton quotation from _Paradise Lost_? Oh, yes. It was better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

It was time to put that theory into action.

_Fin_

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>This is the end of this story. I had always planned to only write the 'origin story' of how Lelouch decides to try to conquer Hell and never planned to go any further. I don't have the military or strategic knowledge it would take to write the campaign it would require to take over the underworld. But anyone is free to take this story or this concept and play with it if they desire. I hope you enjoyed the story and that it made you think a little. _  
><em>


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